Open saucers go on Vista attack

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Open saucers go on Vista attack

BadVista.org launched

By Nick Farrell: Monday 18 December 2006, 08:01

OPEN SAUCERS, the Free Software Foundation, have launched a website to slag off Microsoft Vista and promote free software alternatives.
BadVista.org says that Vista was just an upsell masquerading as an upgrade and took away more of a user's control.

"Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions," the site says.

FSF program administrator John Sullivan said the site will be dedicated to focusing attention on Vista's flaws, detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care.

Sullivan said the organisation will also be cutting through the Vista marketing propaganda, and provide a user-friendly gateway to the adoption of free software operating systems like gNewSense.

http://badvista.fsf.org/

nightzip SG

Microsoft's Windows 2000 Defender untruth

Upgrade or die

By Nick Farrell: Monday 18 December 2006, 08:00

THE VOLE seems to want to make life difficult for Windows 2000 users in the hope that it will upgrade to its newer operating systems.
According to Information Week, Windows Defender documentation makes it clear that the security software will not run on Windows 2000.

However, closer inspection reveals that Vole has nobbled the software by building an artificial rule into the Installshield package that copies Defender files to disk.

The installer contains a condition defined as VersionNT > 500 which prevents Windows 2000 installing defender.

Admins who've removed this condition using Orca, an Installshield editor, say Defender then installs and runs fine on Windows 2000.

Already Windows 2000 is only being given life by Vole under its Extended support scheme. This includes the continued development of critical security patches and the availability of paid support, but not much else.